


Pacing is Half the Journey

by cartographicalspine



Series: The Hearthkeeper [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Conflict Resolution, Gen, Missing Scene, Multiple Wardens (Dragon Age), Road Trips, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 20:30:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16025444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartographicalspine/pseuds/cartographicalspine
Summary: The journey to Ostagar was slow-going and arduous. AKA an excerpt from "The Tale of Duncan the Babysitter".





	Pacing is Half the Journey

One more day’s journey, Duncan reminded himself, feeling seven pairs of eyes burning holes in his back as they followed him down the road. One more day, and maybe they wouldn’t kill each other when they reached the war encampment. They were mercifully not-dead, though not for lack of trying. Oksana still couldn’t be let out of his sight around the proud and prudish Ansgar, and sly Adoryn had made off with nearly everyone’s purse at some point, so she’d been sent to the front with the dwarves to deter any further thievery. Adaia would have been so proud.

At his side, he had the mages; though Diana’s temper had been dormant since the night she tried to burn her former mentor’s face off, Duncan preferred her nearest to him, where he could keep her off Tule more easily. Her misery seemed to come from fear of what she’d nearly come to, not out of any true remorse. She was still young and already he could see that it would not come easy to her. In turn, Tule was absolutely docile compared to the night he’d been conscripted, exactly as the First Enchanter had described him: under his cold disdain, he remained the trembling elven child newly arrived at the Circle, with large brown eyes and no voice of his own, not really. Duncan wondered if Irving would ever admit that this was what had disappointed him the most.

Finlay had not released his grip on his battered shield since Highever, but he  _had_  offered Hanin his shoulder somewhere along the road. Duncan was fully aware of what he would do to these children, but he needed Wardens, and life, any life, was better than their alternatives. Glancing back at them, the youngest and the most lifeless of his recruits, he doubted that they’d agree. Truly, the only time they reacted at all beyond stopping for camp was when the devoted Bernan pressed his nose into their palms or licked eagerly at their fingers. Were it not for that mabari, he was certain that he would have left the pair behind long ago without knowing it.

As he’d just decided on falling back to his neglected charges, shouts erupted from his left, and Angsar moved past him in a whirl of bright-faced indignation. Her hair fell over her flushed cheeks in pale wisps as she drew her broadaxe to wave it in angry rebuke at Oksana.

“Did I not finish telling you to stay back, Duster?”

Oksana’s expression could have frozen the western wastelands twice over. “Look,  _Princess,_  dunno you forgot, but there’s no Dusters or Castes here. So, piss you.”

She added two dirt-stained fingers for good measure.

Adoryn’s eyes were dancing and twinkling from between her fingers, and there was a similar electric air of anticipation from the rest of the group. Ansgar rose to the bait, snapping and biting at the princess comment like the days-old sore spot it yet was. And then Oksana reached for her own axes.

Adoryn jumped back then, too clever and quick to remain in the warpath any longer. Finlay moved next, reaching Duncan with a swiftness he hadn’t seen since Castle Cousland, and even Hanin looked alive as he thumbed over the pouches at his belt, shifting his weight to push off the tree he’d been resting against.

But the two dwarves froze in place before the fight really began, aglow with the light from the glyphs beneath their feet; furious, they turned twin glares at the mages with the only movement left to their eyes. There might have been curses from within their throats, but they couldn’t exactly open their mouths to let them out, could they? Diana and Tule, for their part, refused to look at each other even then.

Duncan felt his jaw crack from stiffness. His face was going to freeze like this at the current rate. “Camp. Now.”

Two more days.


End file.
